Look on the News page for teaching and learning news from the UK art, design and media higher education sector, including events, calls for papers, funding opportunities and more. See the About us page for information on how to share your news on this blog.

Friday, 20 April 2012

Beyond the Beanbag? Towards new ways of thinking about learning spacesJos Boys, University of Brighton

This article, published in 2009, looks critically at some of the assumptions in ideas about learning spaces, especially the arguments in favour of a shift from formal to informal learning spaces. It suggests that the formal/informal divide hides more than it reveals about the complex relationships between learning and the spaces in which it takes place; and that learning spaces in postcompulsory education remains an under-theorised and under-researched area.

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Cardiff5 July 2012Relationships between ceramics and sculpture are a focus for research at Cardiff School of Art and Design. This research has demonstrated that the interests of studio ceramicists and sculptors in Britain either overlapped or came into particularly sharp focus at certain periods during the last century or so. The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, has in the last few years awarded research fellowships to explore such relationships and one outcome was the exhibition A Rough Equivalent, curated by Dr Jeffrey Jones in 2010 .
Both ceramics and sculpture now have to make a case for their survival as discrete disciplines within higher education and, increasingly within the arts, categories are blurred. Recently an issue of Interpreting Ceramics was devoted to interdisciplinary approaches in American ceramics and the 2012 issue of the journal will address relationships between ceramics and sculpture.Against this background the conference seeks to illuminate shared concerns by examining points of formal, conceptual, theoretical and material convergences between the two disciplines, while also addressing key points of difference. The conference is an initiative of Cardiff School of Art and Design (Cardiff Metropolitan University, UWIC) and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. Collaborative partners are Interpreting Ceramics; Welsh Institute for Research in Art and Design (WIRAD); National Centre for Ceramics in Wales.

What will
the future hold for one of the most basic and universal of human activities -
the act of eating? Kingston University is delighted to announce an exciting new
collaborative and cross-cultural project with partner universities across
China. The project, which asks interdisciplinary teams from over 40 leading
Chinese universities to respond creatively to the theme of the Future of
Eating, is part of a family
of projects under the umbrella title 'DreamLab' that make use of bespoke online
resources to forge new ways of working and learning online.

Kingston's 2009 project on the theme of Sleeping and Dreaming matched online
collaboration with cross-cultural relationship building. This first incarnation
of DreamLab, undertaken in partnership with two UK museums (the Design Museum
and Science Museum), two UK universities (Kingston and Bournemouth), and 25
Chinese universities, provided an overarching experience in delivering complex
networked collaborations and in utilising the unique opportunities of industry
and institutional partnerships. In addition to fostering cultural relationships
and encouraging students to think beyond boundaries to answer a challenging and
topical subject -- one that affects all of us -- the project aims to encourage
the development of practical skills. The brief and live competition helps
students prepare for a real-life situation common to the creative industries
and fosters new uses of online platforms for creative development and networking.

Launching in May with a final live event in November, The Future of Eating will be jointly delivered by project partners
Professor Catherine McDermott, course director of Kingston's MA in Curating
Contemporary Design, Professor Edith Sim and Dr Mark Preece in the Kingston
University Faculty of Science, with additional external partners, Professor
Anthony Dunne (RCA) and Tim Molloy (Science Museum). A public-facing blog
tracing project development will launch in July with a series of spin off
events and projects on this theme in planning at partner venues.

NB Connecting Contemporary Designers: a study in piloting e-learning
through collaborative online creative practice across UK and Korea, a project funded
by ADM-HEA and led by Catherine McDermott, relates to DreamLab and will be
published in Networks issue 17.

1 May 2012The aim of the workshop, part of the Higher Education Academy's Workshop and
Seminar Series, is to discuss the lessons learned from the institution wide
approach to e-assessment currently adopted by Middlesex University.

This event, hosted by the Exeter Cascade project and the
Academic Skills Development team at the University of Exeter, will bring
together digital literacy experts, academic advisers, teaching staff and
students to explore the impact of digital methods on academic practice. There
will be opportunities to share ideas and advance our understanding, as well as examine
practice more closely in workshop sessions.

Supporting and developing the curriculum by putting
contemplation back into HE: enhancing students’ attention and effectiveness

Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

25 May 2012

Contemporary Higher Education is under increasing pressure
to justify its existence, be cost effective and produce better graduates. One
attempt to achieve this has been the formulation of graduate attributes (GAs).
These are attributes that graduates are expected to develop during their
studies, in addition to the knowledge and skills relevant to their discipline. Over the last 10 years, there has been a rapid increase in
interest in the use of Contemplative Pedagogies (CPs) in HE to enhance learning and teaching. The focus of this event is the application of CPs to enhance
student teachers’ ability to learn in any subject.

For more information______________________________________________________________________Innovative Learning: Maximising Technology, Maximising PotentialThe Barbican, London27 June 2012This event will address the following: Developing innovative learning methods to fulfill the educational, training and skill requirements that can help contribute to economic growth and prosperity; The European Commission's report The Future of Learning: Preparing for Change aims to identify, understand and visualise major changes to learning in the future; the role of e-learning and technology to deliver innovative and alternative learning techniques; Consider how improving accessibility to resources will also improve learning outcomes and results.For more information

Media History seek to encourage new and innovative scholarship in the field ‘media
history’, broadly defined, and have established this prize to highlight the
best new work in the field undertaken by current graduate students.

They welcome submissions of 6000-7000 words in length that address questions
related to media history in all periods and that cross or challenge
disciplinary boundaries, including history, literary and cultural studies,
politics, communication studies, economics.

The winner will receive £750 in addition to publication in Media History and free access to the
journal online for one year. Two runners-up will receive free access to thejournal online for one year.

Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education, first
published by Intellect in 2002, strives to develop research in arts and media based subjects
in educational institutions. The range of this refereed journal encompasses all
areas of higher education: the focus is placed upon practice-based education in
fine art, as well as theoretical evaluations of subjects such as media studies,
cultural studies, and the history of art and design. In its commitment to the
expansion of learning and teaching methods through research, the journal offers
detailed accounts of specific research projects. By using the findings of these
enquiries, contributors reveal the potential value of new educational
strategies, and stimulate the advancement of creative teaching methods.

Alongside these practical approaches, contributors also develop a critical platform for the study of teaching in the arts and media
sector. In order to assimilate these theories in a real environment, the contributions query the context in which educational strategies are practiced. The journal examines the correlation between the success of practiced
techniques, in relation to both the type of institution and the genre of study. Articles are gathered from an extensive community of researchers, allowing the journal to provide a comprehensive profile of education research in art, design and communication studies.

The research field of Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education includes:All areas of Higher Education, including the fields of:

Practice based education in fine art, design and media

Theoretical studies including cultural studies, art and design history and media studies.

All aspects of learning and teaching in art, design and
communication including:

Research underpinned evaluations of curriculum

Student learning

Approaches to teaching

Teacher and educational development

This peer-reviewed journal is published three times a year. There are no deadlines, the journal has an open submissions policy.

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

The mission of Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art, published by Intellect, is to provide a forum for engaging the complex, rich and multifaceted process of learning and teaching art.Published three times a year and peer reviewed, the print-based journal launched its first publication in 2011. The journal highlights the process of creating art, teaching as an art form, engaging art submissions, scholarship in teaching artistry, and the rich traditions of art making and teaching. The call for papers is open to anyone concerned with issues related to learning and teaching art.

The journal seeks a serious yet experimental approach to publication that values the myriad of visual art processes in contemporary culture. Readable to the outsider yet encouraging and challenging to the experienced artist-teacher, the journal will fill a niche in art and art education with a breadth and enthusiasm missing in contemporary art and art education journals.

The journal seeks articles, reflections on artwork, interviews, original artwork and book/exhibition reviews that address one or more of the following themes:

Art appreciation

Learning and teaching in museums

Teaching artistry

The role of creativity in learning and teaching

History of art education

Art-based research

Teaching art in primary school to higher education and beyond

The relationship between art making and teaching

Art addressing teaching and learning

Philosophy of teaching and learning art

Aesthetic education

Design education

Learning from art

The voice of artist-teachers

Teaching art outside school walls

Analysis of teaching and learning art experiences

There are no deadlines, the journal has an open submissions policy.

For more informationVolume 1| Issue 1, the current issue, is available for free from the link above.

'The Art of Print' is the first in a series of discussions by
artists, writers and curators working with contemporary photography, devised by
the University of Wolverhampton as part of wlvfotofest.

Individual artistic goals and experimentation used to be the
basic goals of residency programmes within student and artists practice. Now
with the emerging concern for mapping the creative process and responding to
the idea of a convincing methodology for supporting knowledge development in
this key discipline, we are able to engage in a conversation which is now
global in nature offering us a platform for sharing theoretical and practical
knowledge around the idea of residencies and artist led projects.

This series will be designed to respond and engage with the
European ‘Re –Tooling Residencies - a closer look at the mobility of art
professionals’, publication and website 2009-2011.

‘The Art of the Print’ comes from the development of new
understandings of artistic practice and presentation of visual forms with
exhibition value, including the projected image and the notion of the image as
spectacle included now in scenography practice and performance. This timely
publication and website offers a chance to share the research to date and
respond to the call to develop a methodology for the effective analysis of the
creative and social processes related to such mobility in a global perspective.
Contemporary photography practice now considers this notion of re-location and
the consequences that may be revealed while mapping national, transnational
and/or global flows of labour, conflict and co –operation.

The ideas of documentary and interactive documentary
practice are ongoing within photography education and its discourse with online
projects becoming the norm for cultural sites of exchange. The implications for
teaching and learning are the challenges for the teaching of practice that as
stated has much wider cultural connotations and we need to interrogate these
boundaries and reflect on the ways that relocation, exchange , translation and
learning through artistic practice can be evaluated in the context of the
mobility of emerging art professionals.

This is part of the Higher Education Academy Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series.

Tuesday, 17 April 2012

This workshop, one of the Higher Education Academy Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series, will be an initial one off event intended to
establish networks and relationships between educators involved in the delivery
of professional practice aspects of the creative curriculum in independent art
colleges. The workshop will meet the following stated aims of the HEA:

To facilitate the sharing of policy, practice and
evidence, within disciplines across institutions.

To promote critical discussion in relation to enhancing
the quality of the student learning experience.

The focus of the workshop will employability in the art
school and will reference the results of the survey of graduate employment
published in Ball L, Pollard E, Stanley N Creative Graduates Creative Futures
Report 471, Council for Higher Education in Art and Design; University of the
Arts London, January 2010.

The workshop will give delegates the opportunity to:

Become familiar with the findings in the report

Examine the curricula they deliver in the light of the
findings

Identify and share good practice in the employability
curriculum for art, design and media

Discuss potential opportunities for the development of
curricula and the sharing of good practice.

Unprecedented changes in UK higher education are placing the
Arts & Humanities under particular scrutiny and pressure. Pedagogies of Hope and Opportunity is the HEA’s first annual
conference dedicated solely to enhancing learning and teaching and the
experience for Arts & Humanities students. Over two days and 30 parallel sessions and interactive
workshops, the conference will explore the latest developments and innovations
in Arts and Humanities learning and teaching.

Keynote speakers:

Professor
Giovanni Schiuma, Professor in Innovation and Knowledge Management
and Scientific Director of the Centre for Value Management at the Universita
degli Studi della Basilicata, Italy.

The Higher Education Academy is looking for a
photograph/digital image which captures how it feels to study the Arts and
Humanities when studying the Arts and Humanities is at its best. All entries
will be displayed at the Arts and Humanities annual conference and the student who submits the HEA's favourite image will win the choice of either a new third generation iPad 16
GB, 4G with WiFi or £450 in Book Tokens. Details of the competition are
available on the main event page.

This may be of interest to your students.TIFF, a new film festival, is seeking submissions; it is an open
competition and there are nine categories:

Fiction

Documentary

Animation

Music Video

Experimental

Under 16

International

Foreign Language

Student

There will also be awards for Best Performance, Best Editing,
Best Direction, Best in Festival (one of the winners of the categories) and Audience
Choice.

It is £5 for a student entry (£10 for regular entries).
There are trophies and professional software on offer as prizes; nominated
films will also be seen by the panel of celebrity judges and industry
professionals (including Jim Loach, Jason Flemyng and Brain Berdan).

Monday, 16 April 2012

Social Media, Journalism and
Communication Practitioners - International Symposium

North Holmes Campus, Canterbury Christ Church University

7 September 2012

Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2012

This event is organised by the Department of Media, Art and
Design in collaboration with the Business School, Canterbury Christ Church
University.

Social media, and the Internet in general, are having
dramatic impacts on journalism (Deuze, 2007; Sarrica, 2010). Traditional
practices of newsgathering, verifying stories and reporting are transforming
and with that the profession itself is perceived to be changing fundamentally.
Web 2.0 Internet technologies are viewed to have changed "newsroom culture
and the professionals involved" and they "challenge perceptions of
the roles and functions of journalism as a whole" (Deuze and Paulussen,
2002, p. 216). But scholars continue to debate exactly how journalism as a
profession is changing and about the impacts of new technologies such as social
media (Lasorsa et al., 2012). Discussion on the impacts of these technologies
have centred on three main issues: changes in relationship with the audience,
changing journalistic practices and changes in professional values and the
profession as a whole. This international symposium explores these and related
issues.

The conference is open to academics as well as industry
practitioners. Papers / presentations are invited in the general subject area of
social media. Suggestions include, but are not limited to:

Comparative study
of social media use

Impact of social
media on audience relationship

Changing
journalistic practices

Purposes of social
media use

Attitudes towards
social media

PR professionals
and social media

Patterns of social
media usages

Impacts of social
media on journalistic values

Influence of
social media on communication practices

Best papers from the symposium will be published in a
special edition of a refereed journal.